


the nature of the beast

by lightfighter



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, Somewhat, a bit of villanelle character study, and there is a rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:13:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26230201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightfighter/pseuds/lightfighter
Summary: Villanelle is no stranger to death.Rather, she regards it almost warmly. It is an old companion, a colleague, one she has even at times called a friend.If it is coming for her now, well, then. So long as it is not taking Eve.[Killing Eve week, day 2]
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Comments: 17
Kudos: 124
Collections: Killing Eve Week 2020





	the nature of the beast

**Author's Note:**

> My offering for Killing Eve week, day 2.

Villanelle is no stranger to death. 

Rather, she regards it almost warmly. It is an old companion, a colleague, one she has even at times called a friend. 

Even before she found her calling in her current career (or, perhaps it is more fair to say, it found _her_ ), death was there with her, for her. 

Her mother said that it hung over her like a cloud, infecting others and going with her wherever she went. (But she was wrong, of course — _she_ was the dark cloud, not Villanelle.)

But whatever the truth of the matter, Villanelle cannot deny that she has never found the option of violence, or the outcomes that may result from it, particularly distasteful; if the world is going to shy away from her, deny her, see something missing in her that she cannot give voice to or even really understand, that’s fine — she’ll just _take_ what she wants instead. 

What’s a few floors burned in an orphanage in which she was left to rot, idiot schoolboys who mistook her silence for weakness, a husband in the way?

Nothing at all. 

And when it becomes her career, well, so much the better. Other people make little sense to her, not that she has much desire to explore the small dreams and boring hopes that presumably keep them from ripping their hair out as they live their average, pedestrian lives.

But she _does_ find the way they die very interesting indeed. The pleas and cries are tedious — seriously, will someone please give the mortally afraid some new material — but are worth being borne in the assurance that it will end the same way it always does: with her old companion coming, after all is quiet, to collect whatever is left. 

And she gets to watch as it does.

Watch as their souls go _in_ , the light fading from their eyes in a way that has yet to grow old. The knowledge that she has done that, the power it gives her — the rush that comes with it is like nothing Villanelle has been able to replicate. 

Well, there _is_ one other thing. Or person, she supposes she should say.

However, that person is also the reason she is presently finding herself with so much time to consider her collegial relationship with death, so maybe these are what are called her “just desserts.” (An odd English phrase, that, but then, aren’t they all.) 

She’s never had much time or patience for concepts like karma or justice — she has thus far found in her own life’s experience that it is really just more about those who take, and those from whom things are _taken_ — but she understands the general gist, that eventually you have to pay your due back to the universe. And her scales, some could perhaps argue, are _very_ lopsided. 

She doesn’t understand it, really. Villanelle can appreciate, on an intellectual level, that people find death terrifying, that when it comes down to it, as she has seen time and time again, they don’t _want_ to die. The fear of whatever comes next is profound, as she understands it, be it some sort of afterlife or just...nothingness. She doesn’t really want to die either, she supposes, she rather enjoys her nice clothing and expensive things that one by necessity be alive to enjoy, but she can’t say she’s deeply afraid in the way that her many targets have been. She has spent so much of her life so deeply bored; death would be a new, uniquely singular experience, at least. 

And everyone has to die, sooner or later. For those in her line of work, it is often sooner. 

It is the nature of the beast.

She idly tries to adjust her badly chafing wrists, but they hardly budge against the tight bindings — too tight, her hands are going numb. It’s all terribly sloppy, actually. It’s _embarrassing_ , too; she’s clearly gone soft. That such amateurs have managed to get the drop on her can only mean that she’s lost the edge Dasha and Konstantin and everyone else spent so much time and effort trying to hone.

There is some irony here in that it took a single woman a fraction of the years they expended to wear it down to seemingly nothing.

But she’d expect nothing else from Eve. 

And what else was she supposed to do, really? They would’ve shot Eve without hesitation had she not gone with them, this she does not doubt for an instant. Aside from one notable instance, naturally also involving Eve and a knife on a bed, she knows what people are capable of, _knows_ what they are prepared to do. 

And they would’ve killed Eve. And Villanelle has learned, through her own abortive attempts, that for all her comfort with death, her understanding that it will take her, too, she is not quite ready for it to take Eve. 

(And if this is called love, well, so be it. She didn’t think she was capable of it, has been told as much more times than she cares to recall. And yet, there it is. Burning uncomfortably in her chest and making itself known at the most inconvenient times. 

This is something she is only starting to explore, and only within herself. It is an uncomfortable thing, this introspection. She understands perfectly why she’s previously had no desire or need to attempt such a thing. The fact that she is doing it at all now just goes to show the number Eve has done on her. And all with such little evident effort. It would be irritating if it didn’t just make her like Eve more.)

So she went with them, pretending not to see the fury and shock and grief on Eve’s face as she went, the standard ugliness following — beatings and blood and threats and demands for information that she doesn’t even have, isn’t that funny — and now she’s...here. Some third-rate warehouse situation. _Amateurs_.

She spits off to the side in disgust. It comes out red. 

She’s fairly certain that, with enough time, and just the right window of opportunity, she’ll be able to stage her great escape. The idiots who have her in their clutches — who _think_ they have her in their clutches — are great hulking things who know how to throw a punch and make it hurt, but they don’t appear to be overly burdened with intellect. 

They didn’t even properly search her. She’s almost insulted — do they _know_ who she is? She has half a mind to call them back from wherever they’re having a huddle to strategize over their next move — she hopes they don’t strain too hard — and set them straight. 

She is (was, sometimes still is, semantics) the Twelve’s best assassin. The demon with no face. Walking death, etc. And she has a reputation to uphold, damn it!

She reigns in the urge at the last moment. Eve really _would_ kill her if she gave in to each and every wild impulse she has these days, at least as they relate to her continued existence, and that would just be self-defeating at this point.

(This doesn’t mean that Villanelle has stopped testing the bounds, always pushing that last bit just because she can and to see what happens when she does. This is who she is. But for Eve, she can try to exercise the barest bit of self-control. 

The things we do for love.)

Her magnificent display of self-mastery is either rewarded or punished, depending on your point of view, by the return of the man who Villanelle supposes is the ringleader of this little band of second-stringers. That presumably makes him the brains of the bunch, though this is not a glowing endorsement.

He glares at her. She glares right back. Her glare is much better than his. 

After a moment of this, he grunts. (Of course he does.) “We do not think you know anything.”

Okay, _rude_. “I know lots of things, actually.”

“The information we want. You do not have it.”

He’s absolutely right, of course — she and Eve are still working on their intel gathering skills, if they’re being honest — but she’s hardly about to give this idiot the pleasure of being right. “I wouldn’t be so sure.” She smirks, an expression she’s successfully workshopped to piss off the vast majority of its recipients. “You wouldn’t know what to do with it, anyway.”

He doesn’t react to her goading, and her estimation of him raises a smidge. It raises a whole lot more, this time combined with some faint alarm, when he produces a gun from his waistband. “We cannot let you go or leak our location. We know your reputation.”

 _Thank_ you. A little recognition, that’s all she’s ever asked for!

He raises the gun. Oh right, he has a gun. “And frankly, this is easier. Sorry.”

Villanelle stares at him. As deaths go, this is not, admittedly, her first or even second option. Or eighth. She’d much rather go out in a blaze of glory, or, if she must, in Eve’s arms, in a very dramatic tableau. Being shot by some neanderthal while tied to a chair in a shitty warehouse did not make the list. 

And yet, here he stands, here she sits. 

Examines her options, finds them wanting. Considers the possibility, looming suddenly quite close, that death, her constant companion, may be coming to call once again, but this time for her. That this time, the only one to watch the quiet aftermath will be this...this _nobody_.

Perhaps there are scales out there that must be evened after all. 

And she finds that she does not want to die. 

Oh, she is not about to break into the hysterics she has seen so many times — please, give her a _little_ credit — but she is aware of a feeling of wrongness growing in her chest. This is not what is supposed to be happening, this is not how it’s meant to go. She’s meant to be with Eve, she doesn’t want to leave her, not like this and not now. Not when she’s just begun to consider the distinct possibility that she not only wants Eve not dead but in fact alive and well, that she wants to be alive as well to ensure for herself that Eve stays that way, that she wants all this because she _loves_ her—

Oh dear. Is _this_ what all those people were breaking down over, what drove them to desperate pleas and grandiose promises on which they could never deliver? It is a most peculiar, unpleasant feeling. She does not like it at all.

He releases the safety. Takes aim. She stares at him, heart racing, but face resolute. She will not beg. She will not plead. 

And above all else, she will not close her eyes. He will have to look into her eyes as the light fades, she will accept nothing less. 

Even if all she can think about this moment is Eve. 

Eve, who, she thinks, loves her.

Eve, who is wonderfully not here and alive. 

Eve, who would definitely kill her herself in this moment for getting in the van with these goons and triggering this whole chain of events.

Eve, Eve, Eve. 

A shot rings out, deafeningly loud in the empty warehouse. 

Villanelle stares. The man stares back at her. And then falls to the ground, gun falling from his limp hand. Blood begins to seep onto the concrete under him.

Villanelle never breaks eye contact. Neither does he. The light in his irises begins to fade, and she feels death in the room. But for once, there is no accompanying rush.

Only when he is gone does she look away, to where Eve stands, some few feet away, gun still held in her outstretched hands. They are shaking very slightly.

“Eve.” 

Eve jerks, almost dropping her gun before stuffing it into her coat pocket. She meets Villanelle’s gaze, her eyes wide. 

Villanelle smiles. “You’re here.”

This seems to break the spell, and Eve rushes to her. “Oh my god, are you okay?” 

Villanelle remembers that she probably doesn’t look very good, if the way her face is throbbing is any indication. “You should see the other guy.” 

She flits her eyes to the body before them, and Eve stiffens, worry turning to fury in an instant. “What were you _thinking?!_ You just went with them, no hesitation at all!” As she talks, though, she is already pulling out a pocket knife to work on the binding around Villanelle’s wrists. “We are a team, Villanelle, you can’t just make decisions like that on your own!”

“Eve—”

“I know you have more experience in this area, but that guy was about to _shoot_ you, you would have— you would have—” 

The ties fall away, which is convenient as Eve has stopped talking, the reality of what she has just narrowly averted sinking in. Villanelle takes a second to shake out her aching hands — and yep, her wrists are bleeding, goddamn _amateurs_ — before reaching up to gently grasp Eve’s face. “Eve. It didn’t happen. You saved me.”

Eve’s eyes promptly fill with tears. 

Villanelle tries to smile, though her eyes are suspiciously stinging now too. All these things only started happening when she fell in love, it is very inconvenient. “You make a very dashing Prince Charming, actually, I should get you a cape—”

And then Eve is kissing her, there in that shitty warehouse, and though Villanelle is pretty sure her split lip is bleeding again she cannot bring herself to care. 

Because death has come and gone, and left them both alive and together, and for the first time Villanelle realizes that that in itself is something to treat as the precious thing it is.

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> @lightfighterfic on twitter :)


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